It’s been just over a month since Google added 12 new US cities to Street View, and yesterday we got new imagery in another 13 cities, and interestingly, a US national park! Here’s some of the highlights, including links straight there:

• Albuquerque, New Mexico
• Anchorage, Alaska
• Austin, Texas
• Cleveland, Ohio
• Fairbanks, Alaska
• Little Rock, Arkansas
• Madison, Wisconsin
• Nashville, Tennessee
• Rockford, Illinois
• Richmond, Virginia
• Spokane, Washington
• St. Petersburg, Florida
• Tampa, Florida

Finally, Google have also added imagery for the few roads that run through Yosemite National Park, California, which enables us to see some pretty stunning scenery.

Here’s El Capitan, a 910 metre vertical rock formation that’s a popular challenge for rock climbers, and some spectacular Giant Redwoods living up to their name!

Read the full story at the Google Lat Long Blog, read more about El Capitan and Giant Redwoods at Wikipedia.

The cliquey Foo Camp was born out of a joke at O’Reilly that they should create a literal “Foo Bar”. The event is held each year at O’Reilly’s headquarters and during the 2006 event (held during August 25-27, 2006) Google organised a flyover photograph for inclusion in Google Earth.

The very high-resolution image shows the “tech superstar” attendees lying around the grass with a simple “Welcome to Foo Camp” sign, but surely it was a missed opportunity for writing messages with human bodies? Of course, if the Google Sightseeing team are invited to next year’s Foo Camp, then we’ll definitely organise everyone to spell out a rude message.

Updated: It turns out that the Foo Campers did draw exciting things in the Orchard, it’s just that only a small part of the image was uploaded to the default Google Earth layer. I’ve created a Google Earth image overlay of the full-sized image (2.28MB).

The Wirefly X Prize Cup was a space exposition held during October 20-21, 2006, that featured all sorts of space related fun including “Live rocket launches, prize competitions, rocket plane flights, jet pack flights, astronaut talks, an entire space theme park on the ground, and much more.”

As part of the event the organisers released lots of Google Earth content, including 3D models and the Google Earth Space Atlas, all of which can be downloaded from the Google’s mini site.

More info: FooCamp wiki on the overflight and Google Earth Blog post on the Wirefly X Prize photograph.

This is the utterly bizarre, and totally incredible White Sands National Monument in New Mexico, USA. The monument is the southernmost part of a 710 square kilometre (275-square mile) field of startlingly white sand dunes, which are composed of gypsum crystals which are water soluble, but as there’s no sea outlet, all the dissolved gypsum from the surrounding mountains collects here instead.

You can picnic, sandboard, and take guided orientation and nature walks here, however I’m pretty sure the guides won’t let you wander too far, as the monument is within the White Sands Missile Range. They actually close the monument to the public roughly twice a week to conduct tests! The most famous weapon tested at this range was the first ever detonation of an atomic bomb on July 16, 1945 - the infamous Trinity Test.

The brand-newly launched Yahoo Maps Beta has some stunning high-res images of the test site (and some very nifty features too). Compare the Google image with the Yahoo one:

We look forward to receiving a deluge of Yahoo Maps submissions!

Thanks to Allen Ormond, Shital Shah, Richard, Tim Gregory, Int13, Tyler, Richard Rowley, Kyle, Jeff, Mike, Earl, Alan, Steve Ransom, Rob Marshall, Bruno, Matt Musselman, Mr. Putty, an MP, woowoowoo, Percel and Matt

Welcome to Stonefridge. Yes, this really is a replica of Stonehenge - made entirely from refrigerators. Built using only human-power, the monument is now 2.5 fridges high.

Apparently the artist (yes, this is art) needs only 60 more fridges to complete his 8-year-old dream. There’s an article about Stonefridge at the Albuquerque Tribune which has details of how to donate your old fridges.

Thanks to Russ.

You might remember the communities where to be part of the “in” crowd is to have your own tennis court. That’s all very well but in Cielo Dorado Estates you need your own plane! There’s a private runway running right though the centre of the community which is shared by all the residents. The community website has annotated maps and ground level photos. It looks like there might still be a couple of plots of land available, if you’re interested

Perhaps you’d prefer Denver to New Mexico? No problem, they’ve got a similar setup. Most of the houses in these areas have large hangars to house their planes, but the odd one is parked outside.

But what about those houses which aren’t directly on the runway (like this one in another community in Dallas)? That’s no problem as the connecting roads are extra-wide to accommodate you driving your plane down to the runway for your Sunday afternoon flights.

Thanks: Myke Westover, BlueTypewriter & Mousky

These two giant inter-locking circles encapsulating diamonds apparently signify the ’secret’ location of a huge Scientology vault which has been constructed to protect the writings of L. Ron Hubbard, etched onto stainless steel and stored in titanium cases.

According to former members of the group, future Scientology fans will be able to travel through time and space, in a spacecraft which looks a lot like a Douglas DC-8 airliner, to reach this site.

More about the area in a recent Washington post article.

Thanks: hominid & phillias

Woah! Somebody really, really likes pecans!

Thanks to Steve Andersen and William Eckley.

Chaco Culture National Historical Park is in north-western New Mexico and was the heart of the ancestral Puebloan culture between AD 850 and 1250. During that time they built monumental “great houses” from the yellow-orange sandstone that permeates the region, the largest of which is Pueblo Bonita which had more than 600 rooms and was inhabited by about 1000 people. Just to the East is another such house, Chetro Ketl and even more to the west.

Thanks: Forthright, Josh, Jim Scott, Matt Van Pelt, Jacob Harris, Jeff Burton, ambientfusion, John, Adam Sanders, Matt Musselman & woowoowoo.